CHAPTER XV 



LEADING ARGUMENTS FOR DESCENT 



WE shall here consider a few last argu- 

 ments that are still to be taken into 

 account in showing the futility of the 

 attempts to trace man back to a purely animal 

 source. We are now all familiar with what is 

 well described as the Haeckelian "hoax" that was 

 successfully perpetrated upon the scientific world 

 for a length of years. The embryonic growth 

 of man was fancifully compared with the develop- 

 ment of the human race. Every individual was 

 thus said to pass through various stages repre- 

 senting a supposed faithful reproduction of the 

 evolution of all his race, from a single primitive 

 cell, the imaginary Moneron, through worm, fish 

 and ape, with all the intermediate forms, on to 

 ] Homo sapiens, or modern man. All this was de- 

 lightfully ingenious, its only fault being that it was 

 not true. 



Haeckel at first postulated twenty-two and later 

 thirty stages of development, by which he pur- 

 posed to prove the descent of man from the beast, 

 and so, as he thought and expressly stated, to de- 

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